


Years Can't Erase What's in my Heart

by BekkaChaos



Series: Gallavich Drabbles [130]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Future Fic, Gallavich, Gen, M/M, Reminiscing, fifteen years later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 05:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2801663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BekkaChaos/pseuds/BekkaChaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It has been 15 years since Ian left the South Side, leaving Mickey behind after a messy break up. It still stung to think of him but it had been so many years that he doesn't seem to think of him as often as he once did. He had moved on and his life had changed, but a visit from someone he hadn't seen since he was much, much younger will turn his new life completely on its head and back down a path he thought he was done with forever.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Years Can't Erase What's in my Heart

It's been 15 years since Ian left, up and moved away from the South Side when it all got too much. Nothing was working, everything had just changed too much and he needed a fresh start. The worst part about it was that Mickey didn't come with him.

The details were too few and too many all at the same time, and after a while Ian really had to stop himself from thinking about it. Now, he's all but forgotten about how they used to be.

He didn't move far, only out to Detroit, just a little way out of the city. It was enough that his family could still come visit when they wanted too, but apparently too far for Mickey to go and find him.

Anyway, he'd forgotten most of that now, Mickey hardly ever turned up in his mind and he was thankful for that. Those memories only caused him pain.

He'd had a steady stream of boyfriends after that, none of them lasting too long. One of them made it to three years, but there was no future for them.

So he lived in a decent house, four bedroom, two bathroom, double story; big enough to house family members when they came to stay, which was less often now. They all had families of their own.

He was the part owner of a local deli chain, his take-no-shit South Side demeanour made it easy for him to get a job doing security when he first moved away, then he gradually moved up the ranks until he was running his own store, then all it took was chipping in some of his salary. It's not glamorous, and it doesn't make nearly as much money as everyone thinks it does, but he's comfortable for probably the first time in his life.

One morning he sat downstairs, eating his breakfast, the guy he had been seeing casually getting ready for work. He was a nice guy, attractive, decent job, but Ian could already tell that it wasn't going to work. Still, it was nice to have company and a reliable source for sex.

"So, you want to go out for dinner tonight?" Sam asked with a smile as he did up his buttons.

Ian shrugged, "Maybe, I might have to go over the books again."

"Come on, it'll be fun, my treat," he smiled and Ian returned one, nodding a little.

"Can I agree to call you with an answer later this afternoon?" he asked.

"That's the best I get from you isn't it?" Sam chuckled, looking out the window. “Looks like a nice day, I might take my lunch break _outside_ for a change.”

“Uh huh,” Ian answered, only very vaguely paying attention.

“Well, I gotta get going,” he said, grabbing his bag and Ian stood up to let him out.

He kissed him once, very chaste and on the mouth and let him go on his way, walking down to his car at the bottom of the driveway. As he was about to head back inside he saw a young man standing across the street, leaning against his own beat-up car and staring down at a piece of paper in his hand. He didn’t recognise him but he looked strangely familiar.

The young guy looked up and right at him to which Ian raised an eyebrow. He looked quickly back at his piece of paper again before shoving it in his pocket and calling out so that Ian could hear him.

“Ian Gallagher,” he said, more as a statement than a question and this time Ian narrowed his eyes.

“Who’s asking?” he said.

The guy walked across the street and Ian almost wondered if he had to go get a knife or something, but he stopped when he got a few feet into the front yard.

“Everyone calls me Yev, but you’d probably know it as Yevgeny,” he said with a small shrug.

Ian felt something inside his stomach drop. It dropped so far that it must have fallen right out of him and taken the air in his lungs with it. He was staring down as a face that is now so obviously familiar, Mickey’s kid, his _goddamn kid_.

“I’m not even sure if you remember me,” he said and Ian just gaped at him a little.

He had the same black hair as his dad, the same blue eyes, his mother’s nose and what looked to be her height too. He remembered Mickey to be a little shorter than Yevgeny but _shit_ that was 15 years ago.

“What do you want?” Ian asked.

“I just wanted to know who you were, I mean I didn’t even know you existed until like three weeks ago. You must have left when I was―”

“Three,” Ian filled in. “And a half.”

“I think I kind of remember you though, I remember your hair.”

Ian scoffed a little and ran his hand through his short orange hair. If there was one good thing about his genes it was the fact that Gallagher’s didn’t go bald, and he was only just starting to see greys appear.

“So I’m not really sure what I planned on doing once I got here, didn’t quite think it through,” he bit down on his lip in true Milkovich fashion and squinted in the early morning sunshine.

Ian sighed and shook his head because he knew this was a bad idea. “You want to come in? I’ve got coffee or… _scotch_ ,” he said because god knows he could use a drink right now.

Yevgeny smiled, “Yeah, coffee sounds good.”

He let him inside and showed him to the kitchen, unable to believe that this was the same kid he remembered from all those years ago. He was an adult now, his childhood over and done with and _Jesus Christ_ he walks the same way that Mickey did.

“So, how old are you now?” Ian asked, walking over to make them some coffee as Yev took a seat at the kitchen table.

“Eighteen,” he said.

“How did you find me?” Ian asked. “Wait, start from the beginning, how did you even find _out_ about me?”

“Well, when I was like ten I found this picture in the house of you with my dad and I asked him who you were. He kind of yelled at me not to touch his shit and took the picture away.”

Ian nodded, rolling his eyes a little. “Yeah, sounds about right.”

“I tried asking again but he _really_ yelled then, it was fuckin’ weird.”

“Didn’t beat you up over it or anything,” Ian asked a little dryly.

Yev shook his head, “What, are you kidding? Probably the only person ever who hasn’t laid a hand on me, and trust me, I may have deserved it a couple of times. Once, mom slapped me across the face because I made some stupid comment about her job. Looking back I can sort of see why she did it.”

“Okay, alright, get on with the story,” Ian said, walking to the fridge for some milk.

“Yeah, so anyway, that was ages ago, then I think I remember seeing another picture not long after and tried asking mom about it. She just made this face and got this real dark look like she wanted to kill you or something. Told me not to ask about shit I don’t know,” he said.

Ian chuckled to himself, “I’m familiar with that look.”

He carried the two coffees over to the table and sat down, pushing Yevgeny’s towards him.

“Yeah, so anyway, couple weeks ago I was looking through some old boxes, uncle Iggy said something about old fireworks, I can't remember. Anyway I found this real old box, covered in dust and shit in the attic and there was all this baby crap. I figured it was probably mine and started going through it and found a bunch of pictures,” he reached into his pocket and pulled out an old crumpled one, handing it over to Ian. “Found that one in there.”

Ian’s smile softened as he looked down at himself, 15 years younger and with a toddler in his arms, squeezing him around his face with his tiny arms and a big grin on both their faces. He could still remember the day that was taken, it was a few days before Yev’s third birthday and they were telling him about a party that he was going to have. He had been so excited…

“So I take it you didn’t go to your mom or dad this time?” Ian asked, still looking down at the picture.

“Nah, took it to Aunt Mandy, she told me who you were.”

Ian smiled because of course it was Mandy. Who the fuck else would it be?

“She tell you where to find me?”

“No, said you lived in Detroit or something but she didn’t know where.”

“What did she say when she saw the photo?” he asked.

“Well, she kinda started with ‘holy shit’ and then moved on to ‘you didn’t ask your fucking dad about him right’,” he said. “She told me that you helped take care of me when I was a little kid, that you were like a second dad. She uh, she also said that you broke my dad’s fucking heart when you left, you know, if he ever had one.”

Ian looked down into his coffee with a sigh.

“Her words, not mine,” he said.

“Yeah, sounds like her,” Ian said. “And it hurt more than just Mick― your dad, when I left.”

A moment passed in silence and Yev shuffled in his seat, a little uncomfortable.

“So, maybe you could tell me who you are? I mean, if you really are the dude who helped raise me once upon a time.”

So they launched into a conversation about themselves, Ian was actually quite interested to hear about what had happened in all those years. He tried not to ask questions that involved Mickey but he inevitably came up. Yev seemed to realise that when he talked about his dad it made Ian go quiet and slowly he stopped mentioning him

So it turns out that Terry was finally in prison for good, he knifed a guy for some reason or another and got sentenced to life, his bad record not doing him any favours. Mandy did get married, only barely making it out of the South Side, living on the edge of the neighbourhood with her husband and two kids. Her daughter apparently looks just like her.

Ian listened and they shared a laugh or two but he became more and more interested in asking about Mickey. He couldn’t help himself. He was staring at a guy who looked so much like him and who even had some of the same mannerisms and it had him thinking about him more than he had done in years. He wondered what his face looked like now, whether time had aged him as much as it had done himself.

“So,” Ian asked. “Your parents still married?”

Yev shrugged, leaning back against his chair. They had now moved out onto the back porch, beers in hand and the day started shifting into night.

“Mom is, married some Polish guy. He’s a bit of a douche but she seems happy.”

“You mean they got divorced?” He asked, looking up at him, a little surprised.

“Shit yeah, like when I was seven. Still lived together for a while, even after that they still had to talk to each other because of me,” he said.

“I never knew that,” he said quietly, he’d asked Mickey so many times to leave Svetlana, he never actually thought he would do it.

“Yeah well, I barely knew you _existed_ man, not really,” Yev said, taking a sip of his beer and _god damn_ it he could have been his father.

“Yeah… I’m sorry about that…” Ian said.

“No skin off my back,” Yev shrugged.

Ian’s phone rang for the fourth time in as many hours and once again he checked the I.D. and put it back into his pocket, downing the last of his drink.

“You should probably get that,”Yev said. “Your boyfriend right?”

Ian sighed, “I guess he is.”

“So answer it, if he’s anything like my girlfriend then your balls are fuckin’ mincemeat if you blow him off one more time – wait, fuck, bad choice of words,” he said and Ian couldn’t help but smile at him.

“You making jokes now?” he asked and Yev just smirked.

“Yeah well, you can take it better than my dad can,” he said, his father being somewhat of a grump.

A smile crossed Ian’s lips that he hadn’t intended to let show.

“He took it pretty well back when I knew him,” he said and Yev pulled a face.

“Please tell me you’re trying to be funny because … that’s just not funny,” he said and Ian chuckled.

“I’ll just be a minute,” he said, taking his phone out and going to stand on the inside of the door as he called Sam back.

He sighed as he leant against the wall and waited for the familiar voice.

“Where the hell have you been?” came the first words through the receiver. “I thought we were going to do something for dinner.”

“Yeah, sorry I… I got a little distracted,” Ian said.

“What, all day?” he said coldly.

“It’s not like that,” Ian said, knowing exactly what Sam was implying with his tone. “Just someone I used to know showed up and we’ve been reminiscing.”

“Is that what you call it?” he said with an exasperated sigh. “You know what, I knew what I was getting myself into, we never…”

“Sam, this is not about that,” Ian said.

“Well maybe you should call me when you know what it’s about.”

They hung up and Ian sighed, he knew he probably wasn’t going to call him back, and Sam probably wasn’t going to wait for him to. This was something he knew would happen when they first started, it was the same thing that always happened.

When he walked back outside he could see that Yevgeny was pretending that he hadn’t just heard that entire thing.

“Sorry about that,” Ian mumbled as he sat back down.

Yev shrugged, “Whatever, I get that. Like I said, I got a ball-busting girl back home.”

Ian smiled weakly, there was so much he didn’t know about this kid and so much he should know. Walking out on him when he was just a kid had torn him apart, but between Svetlana telling him how much he _wasn’t_ his kid, and Mickey being… well, _Mickey_ , there was nothing else he could do.

Still, he’d basically been a third parent to him for three years and then what? Nothing? Not even a birthday card? He hated thinking about it, knowing that in some sense of the word he’d turned out like Frank.

“Listen, Yevgeny… I don’t know what compelled you to come down here and find me―”

“Told you, I found the picture and apparently you were pretty important for a few years there so why not come and find you? It’s not like I have a full-time fucking job or anything,” he said with a scoff.

“Doesn’t it piss you off? I mean, I left you, I left the whole damn city,” Ian said.

Yev shrugged. “Yeah, it could do, but I’m not your kid, and _shit_ , how many people hang around for their ex’s kid? I know I probably wouldn’t.”

“Your girl have a kid?” Ian asked, looking up at him.

He shook his head, “Nahh, not sure I could deal with a kid. Got no idea how my fucking parents did it.”

“It is a bit of a mystery,” Ian sighed.

“So uh, why’d you leave then?” he asked, fingers pulling at the edges of the label on the bottle.

His mind flashed back fifteen years, he hated thinking about it.

“Mistakes got made, words were thrown around a little… there were lots of reasons alright? None of them that I really want to get into too much detail about,” he said.

Yev nodded, apparently taking the hint.

It was a whole host of things that led to their downfall. Ian had been in denial over what he now accepted as bipolar disorder, for a long time he hadn’t bothered to get any help. He had periods of hyper sexuality where he would have a range of anonymous encounters with other men, safe to say Mickey didn’t take lightly to that.

But his disorder was in no way the only thing causing a bump in their already rocky path. After Terry got locked up Ian had tried on so many occasions to get Mickey to divorce Svetlana, or to at least consider it. He said he didn’t necessarily want her to leave the house, a lot of that was because of Yev, but that he hated to see Mickey still wearing a fucking wedding ring.

Even when he didn’t have it on his finger, which was almost never, it was still there, hanging over them both that legally, Svetlana was his wife and Ian was nothing.

And Mickey hated talking, and Ian pushed him too hard, and so he finally decided to leave, for good.

He’d left before, gone to stay somewhere else. He’d never left Chicago though. Every time Mickey had come to find him eventually, never more pissed off than the time he found him staying with Ned – completely innocently mind you – and he never waited longer than about a week and a half to come find him.

After their last fight Ian almost expected Mickey to come and find him and bring him back to the South Side like he’d always done, but it had been fifteen years since he’d seen Mickey’s face, so clearly he’d been wrong.

“Well, how’d you meet then?”

Ian was pulled out of his thoughts by Yev’s question and looked up at him. “Sorry, what?”

“You and my dad, how’d you meet?” he asked again.

Ian chuckled a little and sighed nostalgically. “We knew each other when we were kids, sort of, I knew he was anyway… he was a _Milkovich_ , everyone knew who they were. I don’t know if he knew who I was,” he said. “When we first started… _spending time_ together… well that was right after he threatened to kill me, or at least do some permanent damage.”

Yev laughed and took a sip of his beer. “Sounds about right, he didn’t beat your face in or anything?”

Ian went on to recount to him the best parts of their story, the sting somehow becoming less potent.

After a long while of story-time, they stood up and stretched, Ian taking the empty bottle form Yev’s hands.

“I should probably head back man, it’s like a four hour fuckin’ drive,” he said.

“You’re welcome to use one of the spare bedrooms,” Ian said before he could stop himself. “You shouldn’t drive tired.”

“Why have you got so many? You live alone right?” he asked.

“Big family, got to have room for when they come to stay. I only bought it six years ago, my younger brothers and sister used to stay when they wanted a few nights of freedom. They have their own homes now,” he said.

“I’ll be fine,” he said and Ian nodded.

“Well, the offer stands if you change your mind,” he said, heading inside.

Yev was checking his phone, sending a few messages while Ian cleaned up a little in the kitchen. After a couple of minutes he came back in.

“Actually, I am kind of tired, you don’t mind―”

“Go ahead, pick a room, the spares are at this end of the hall,” he said.

Yev gave him a nod and headed towards the stairs with a small ‘thanks’. When his footsteps were just quiet echoes Ian rubbed his eyes and shook his head.

What good could come out of letting Mickey’s kid stay? What good could come from this day in general?

No matter what the answers were, he’d actually enjoyed himself. The only problem was that he had to stop himself from remembering all the good things he’d talked about.

There was no reason for him to torture himself like that.

Still, those thoughts swam in his head as he settled into his sheets and he wasn’t able to escape them until the early hours of the morning, and even then, his dreams weren’t immune to his memories.


End file.
